Do or Die: Clinical Laboratories Must Invest to Build Up LIS-EMR Interfaces with Physicians’ Offices

From the DarkDaily: Do or Die: Clinical Laboratories Must Invest to Build Up LIS-EMR Interfaces with Physicians’ Offices:

By dangling as much as $20 billion in front of physicians to encourage their adoption of electronic medical record (EMR) systems during the next few years, Congress has created a new and expensive challenge for the nation’s clinical laboratories. That challenge is the need for every pathology laboratory to establish a high-function interface from its LIS to the office-based physician’s EMR.

According to one expert, the government’s “carrot and stick” strategy to reward doctors financially for adopting EMR’s, will soon force independent medical laboratories and hospital laboratory outreach programs to play catch up with LIS-EMR interfaces to maintain access to physician referrals and the revenue that accompanies these laboratory test specimens.

It seems to me that the obstacle will be all the physician office systems, not the clinical labs' LIS.  Even if they have the capability - and it will take some time before they do - many physicians are not running the latest versions of their vendor's software, and configuration of an EMR will be time-consuming and costly for them, even if there is government assistance on offer.  Still, eventually it will happen, and the benefits for patients and physicians will be significant.

Comments

[electronic medical records]

By this time, we have to try to adopt the new way and understand it.

-nj